Many bed patients are not alert and do not have full command of their facilities due to a variety of causes including among others process of recovery from anesthesia, trauma, sedation, age etc. Such patients often involuntarily attempt to remove bandages, scratch wounds remove catheters or intravenous needles or make other detrimental use of their hands.
Various hand shields or guards have been proposed to prevent one or more of these activities. For the most part known hand shields for bed patients attempt to immobile the hands and fingers and completely enclose the hand and only permit limited, if any, air circulation over the skin. This leads to detrimental skin conditions. With patients prone to perspiration constant moisture on the hands leads to maceration of the skin. In some other patients the lack of air circulation over the skin cause dryness, cracking, scaling and eventual peeling of the skin.
Accordingly the present invention provides a new and improve patient hand shield very simplified construction which prevents involuntary scratching, removal of bandages and removal of inserted catheters and needles.
The present invention provides a hand shield which is light in weight and does not interfere with normal movement of fingers within the shield yet prevents use of the hands and fingers to scratch, remove bandages or inserted catheters and needles. A hand shield embodying the invention is not restrictive to the patient and permits the grasping and squeezing of objects within the shield, such as a rubber ball, to exercise the hand
An object of this invention is to provide a new and improved hand shield for a bed patient to prevent involuntary removal of bandages, scratching of wounds or sores and removal of catheters and tubes such as gastric and nasal.
A further object of this invention is to provide such a hand shield which does not prevent air circulation over and around a patient's hands.
A further object of this invention is to provide a such new and improved hand shield which is light in weight which permits patients to normally move their fingers but prevents use of the hand fingers for detrimental purposes.